[1] Journal, dated October 28, 1879. Here is the entire passage:

"There are in this world heavy folk, without wings. They struggle down below. There are strong men among them: as Napoleon. He leaves terrible traces among humanity. He sows discord.—There are men who let their wings grow, slowly launch themselves, and hover: the monks. There are light fliers, who easily mount and fall: the worthy idealists. There are men with powerful wings.... There are the celestial ones, who out of their love of men descend to earth and fold their wings, and teach others how to fly. Then, when they are no longer needed, they re-ascend: as did Christ."

[2] "One can live only while one is drunken with life." (Confessions, 1879). "I am mad with living.... It is summer, the delicious summer. This year. I have struggled for a long time; but the beauty of nature has conquered me. I rejoice in life." (Letter to Fet, July, 1880.) These lines were written at the height of the religious crisis.

[3] In his Journal, dated May 1, 1863: "The thought of death." ... "I desire and love immortality."

[4] "I was intoxicated with that boiling anger and indignation which I love to feel, which I excite even when I feel it naturally, because it acts upon me in such a way as to calm me, and gives me, at least for a few moments, an extraordinary elasticity, and the full fire and energy of all the physical and moral capacities." (Diary of Prince D. Nekhludov, Lucerne, 1857.)

[5] His article on War, written on the occasion of the Universal Peace Congress in London in 1891, is a rude satire on the peacemakers who believe in international arbitration:

"This is the story of the bird which is caught after a pinch of salt has been put on his tail. It is quite as easy to catch him without it. They laugh at us who speak of arbitration and disarmament by consent of the Powers. Mere verbiage, this! Naturally the Governments approve: worthy apostles! They know very well that their approval will never prevent their doing as they will." (Cruel Pleasures.)

[6] Nature was always "the best friend" of Tolstoy, as he loved to say: "A friend is good; but he will die, or he will go abroad, and one cannot follow him; while Nature, to which one may be united by an act of purchase or by inheritance, is better. Nature to me is cold and exacting, repulses me and hinders me; yet Nature is a friend whom we keep until death, and into whom we shall enter when we die." (Letter to Fet, May 19, 1861. Further Letters.) He shared in the life of nature; he was born again in the spring. "March and April are my best months for work." Towards the end of autumn he became more torpid. "To me it is the most dead of all the seasons; I do not think; I do not write; I feel agreeably stupid." (To Fet, October, 1869.) But the Nature that spoke so intimately to his heart was that of his own home, Yasnaya Polyana. Although he wrote some very charming notes upon the Lake of Geneva when travelling in Switzerland, and especially on the Clarens district, whither the memory of Rousseau attracted him, he felt himself a stranger amid the Swiss landscape; and the ties of his native land appeared more closely drawn and sweeter: "I love Nature when she surrounds me on every side, when on every hand the warm air envelopes me which extends through the infinite distance; when the very same lush grasses that I have crushed in throwing myself on the ground make the verdure of the infinite meadows; when the same leaves which, shaken by the wind, throw the shadow on my face, make the sombre blue of the distant forest; when the very air I breathe makes the light-blue background of the infinite sky; when not I alone am delighting in nature; when around me whirl and hum millions of insects and the birds are singing. The greatest delight in nature is when I feel myself making a part of all. Here (in Switzerland) the infinite distance is beautiful, but I have nothing in common with it." (May, 1851.)

[7] Conversations with M. Paul Boyer (Le Temps, August 28, 1901).

The similarity is really very striking at times, and might well deceive one. Take the profession of faith of the dying Julie:

"I could not say that I believed what it was impossible for me to believe, and I have always believed what I said I believed. This was as much as rested with me."

Compare Tolstoy's letter to the Holy Synod:

"It may be that my beliefs are embarrassing or displeasing. It is not within my power to change them, just as it is not in my power to change my body. I cannot believe anything but what I believe, at this hour when I am preparing to return to that God from whom I came."

Or this passage from the Réponse à Christophe de Beaumont, which seems pure Tolstoy:

"I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. My Master has told me that he who loves his brother accomplishes the law."

Or again:

"The whole of the Lord's Prayer is expressed in these words: 'Thy Will be done!'" (Troisième lettre de la Montague.)

Compare with:

"I am replacing all my prayers with the Pater Nosier. All the requests I can make of God are expressed with greater moral elevation by these words: 'Thy Will be done!'" (Tolstoy's Journal, in the Caucasus, 1852-3.)

The similarity of thought is no less striking in the province of art:

"The first rule of the art of writing," said Rousseau, "is to speak plainly and to express one's thought exactly."

And Tolstoy:

"Think what you will, but in such a manner that every word may be understood by all. One cannot write anything bad in perfectly plain language."

I have demonstrated elsewhere that the satirical descriptions of the Paris Opera in the Nouvelle Héloise have much in common with Tolstoy's criticisms in What is Art?

[8] Journal, January 6, 1903.

[9] Quatrième Promenade.

[10] Letter to Birukov.

[11] Sebastopol in May, 1853.

[12] "The truth.... the only thing that has been left me of my moral conceptions, the sole thing that I shall still fulfil." (October 17, 1860.)

[13] Ibid.

[14] "The love of men is the natural state of the soul, and we do not observe it." (Journal, while he was a student at Kazan.)

[15]"The truth will make way for love." (Confessions.)

[16] "'You are always talking of energy? But the basis of energy is love,' said Anna, 'and love does not come at will.'" (Anna Karenin.)

[17] "Beauty and love, those two sole reasons for human existence." (War and Peace.)

[18] "I believe in God, who for me is Love." (To the Holy Synod, 1901.)

"'Yes, love!... Not selfish love, but love as I knew it, for the first time in my life, when I saw my enemy dying at my side, and loved him.... It is the very essence of the soul. To love his neighbour, to love his enemies, to love all and each, is to love God in all His manifestations!... To love a creature who is dear to us is human love: to love an enemy is almost divine love!'" (Prince Andrei in War and Peace.)

[19] "The passionate love of the artist for his subject is the soul of art. Without love no work of art is possible." (Letter of September, 1889.)

[20] "I write books, which is why I know all the evil they do." ... (Letter to P. V. Veriguin, leader of the Doukhobors, 1898. Further Letters.)

[21] See the Russian Proprietor, or see in Confessions, the strongly idealised view of these men, simple, good, content with their lot, living serenely and having the sense of life: or, at the end of the second part of Resurrection, that vision "of a new humanity, a new world," which appeared to Nekhludov when he met the workers returning from their toil.

[22] "A Christian should not think whether he is morally superior or inferior to others; but he is the better Christian as he travels more rapidly along the road to perfection, whatever may be his position upon it at any particular moment. Thus the stationary virtue of the Pharisee is less Christian than that of the thief, whose soul is moving rapidly towards the ideal, and who repents upon his cross." (Cruel Pleasures.)